If you have a moonkin related question, feel free to post a reply to this topic, and I or the community will do our best to answer. However, to make it easier on yourself – and on everybody else – follow these tips first:

Check the guide again – maybe you missed something that answered your question!

Post as much detailed, relevant information as you can; Armory link, maybe a raid log, and an explanation of what your issue is.

Are you sure it’s not in the guide? It goes a lot faster if you just read the guide, rather than you waiting for us to repeat what is written here.

We love to help, but many times the information is readily available, and you can save a lot of time by scrolling down to whatever area might give you problems. If that doesn’t help, or something in this guide isn’t clear, don’t hesitate to post in this topic, and we’ll help you out!

This is not to say that you can't enjoy being a Night Elf or Tauren Balance Druid -- only that those two races offer no PvE benefit to the Balance spec. By all means, if you prefer Tauren or Night Elf for other reasons, feel free to enjoy these races as well.

4.0 Stats n’ caps (#SNC)

With the addition of Leather Specialization in Cataclysm, you should always attempt to only use leather gear. Wearing only leather items will increase your intellect by 5%. Equipping just a single piece of cloth gear will remove this bonus, and that is a massive hit to your intellect, and thus spell power and critical strike chance. There is generally no gain from wearing a cloth piece that can outweigh the loss of the leather specialization bonus.

Second, to best equip your Balance Druid for what’s ahead, you must have at least a basic knowledge of how each stat affects you. Balance stat priority is a bit more difficult in Mists of Pandaria.

DoTs receive an additional tick (pre T-14) at 5273 haste, and another at 10289. Achieving these DoT breakpoints are moderate DPS boosts (the real gain is from all that haste rating!). If you can reach the 10289 haste breakpoint and keep 5k+ crit rating, then the priority is:

Hit = Spirit > Haste (10296) > Crit > Mastery > Haste (post GCD cap)

However, if you're unable to reach that breakpoint, you should just go for the 5273 haste breakpoint and then dump the rest of your points into crit:

Basically, you do not want to reforge/regem to haste until you can be assured you reach either breakpoint, and additionally when going for the 10296 haste cap you want to retain 5k crit rating or more.

A great spreadsheet that identifies stat values and allows you to setup gear, reforges, gems and see the effect on your dps can be found here:

Intellect: Intellect is our strongest stat and, as such, obviously something you will want a whole lot of. Intellect gives you the following:

Additional spell power. One point of intellect gives you 1 spell power (actually 1.169 spell power after figuring in talents and leather armor bonuses).

Higher chance to score a critical strike with spells. One point of Intellect gives you 0.00046% crit chance. In other words, you need 2168 Intellect for 1% chance to crit.

Hit Rating: Hit is an important stat for every single class. Thankfully, it is fairly easy for us to attain hit, so this should always be your first priority. Each ~340 hit rating gives you 1% chance to hit. Additionally, each point of Spirit also gives you 1 point of hit rating, meaning that 340 Spirit increases your chance to hit by 1%. Because of this, we can simply assume that Spirit = Hit and treat them both as the same.

You will need 15% hit (5100 hit rating) to never miss a spell. You can also hover your mouse over your spell hit rating to see your chance to miss against mobs of equal level, or boss level monsters.

If you are new to balance and have very beginner level gear, remember that you can double dip hit and spirit on gear via reforging.

Haste rating (1% = 425 haste): Haste is very attractive to reach the breakpoint. However, many assume that Haste rating itself is bad and we only go for the haste breakpoints -- this is false. Haste rating is very important to a boomkin's DPS, and we see haste becoming devalued after the haste GCD cap (10296 rating). Since this GCD cap and the last haste breakpoint are very close (10289, within 7 rating) people often interchange these two values. It's important to note that we mean haste rating drops off after the GCD cap.

Haste will affect the following:

Reduces the global cooldown of your spells.

Reduces cast time of your Starfire, Wrath, Starsurge as well as reduces channeled spells such as Hurricane and Tranquility.

Crit (1% = 600 crit): With the change to DoT refreshment as well as Shooting Stars, crit has once again became a very attractive stat for Balance Druids. Fortunately, the spell weights are still within reason for each other, not causing any single stat to be absolutely horrible.

Stat Addendum: Haste Breakpoints
Although I noted general Haste value above, it's worth being aware of some common haste breakpoints. Here's a list of these values with all typical raid buffs. You can also check WrathCalcs spreadsheet that is referred to above to see your exact caps in any setup.

For cast-time spells, now that Wrath is a 2s base cast, it cannot run up against the 1s GCD minimum at any reasonable level of haste (outside of Heroism/Bloodlust, Haste procs). There is a notable haste cap where the GCD hits 1.0s with Nature's Grace active. This requires 1.5/(1.05*1.15) - 1 = 24.22% haste, or 10296 haste rating.

Reforging:
Reforging allows you to change 40% of one stat on an item into another. You can only swap between Spirit, Hit, Haste, Crit and Mastery, and you can only change one stat into another stat that isn’t already on the item. This means that if you have an item with Haste and Crit, you cannot turn 40% of the Crit into more Haste, but you can turn it into Mastery rating if you are so inclined.

When reforging, you should work from these principles:

Unable to reach 5273/10289 haste:

Step 1) Reach the hit cap. Steal from mastery and haste first.

Step 1a) If needed, double dip spirit/hit on the same item.

Step 2) Find any pieces of gear that do not have Crit as a secondary stat and reforge Crit there. I generally steal from Spirit or Hit first and leave throughput stats alone but I may steal from other throughput stats if a piece doesn't have any Spirit, Hit, Haste on it.

Step 3) If you're over the hitcap and have full crit reforge, reforge spirit/hit to haste/mastery.

As a jewelcrafter, Brilliant Serpent's Eye ends up being stronger than the yellow crit gem due to the red gems receiving a 2x stat bonus (vice a 1.5x stat bonus for yellow gems).

7.0 Talents (#TAL)

Only two tiers of talents affect throughput in Mists of Pandaria. These are the Level 60 row (Soul of the Forest, Incarnation and Force of Nature) and the Level 90 row (Heart of the Wild, Nature's Vigil and Dream of Cenarius).

For the level 60 tier, Incarnation and Force of Nature are pretty standard talents, where Force of Nature is preferred for single-target fights and Incarnation when you have two or more. With 5.4, Soul of the Forest got a reworking, but still doesn't compete as well as the other two talents. Soul of the Forest features a good deal of RNG and only offers to truncate our cycle, rather than buff our damage outright.

As for the level 90 tier, Heart of the Wild has become the standard talent for use. With 5.4 Nature's Vigil got a 20% buff (10% up to 12%), which makes it slightly below Heart of the Wild for almost all fights. Dream of Cenarius had big changes with the new patch, and now buffs all eclipse damage by 25% at the expense of a Healing Touch twice per cycle. Dream of Cenarius looks to be the go-to talent for multiple target fights (much like Incarnation), whereas Heart of the Wild would be for single target and possibly two target fights.

8.0 Glyphs (#GLPHS)

While there are no through-put glyphs that will help your DPS, there are some very nice utility glyphs every Moonkin should have. Pick and choose your favorite three.

Glyph of Guided Stars - Starfall only hits targets affected by Moonfire or Sunfire, which can prevent a lot of those "Starfall did it" moments.

Glyph of Stampede - Let's you cast your Roar without being forced into another form, which makes this spell require a lot less effort.

Glyph of Stampeding Roar - This glyph makes the range of your Roar significantly larger. Really good if your raid is spread out but could use with a speed increase.

Glyph of Rebirth - Increases the health your battle res target gets on reviving from 60% to 100%. If they accidentally pop up too early and get hit by a spell, this glyph could be the difference between them dying again or surviving the blast.

9.0 Enchants (#ENCH)

Enchants are usually pretty straight forward. Here is what you should generally go for:

Tailoring:Lightweave Embroidery gives 2000 int for 15 seconds, 20% proc on spellcast, 50 second cooldown. The average benefit is around 500 Int, minus the 180 Int you usually have on your cloak, for an increase of around 320 Int.

The remaining professions increase the secondary stats of Haste and Crit instead of the primary stat Intellect and provide far less benefit as a result:Herbalism: Gives a haste cooldown via Lifeblood, it averages out to 480 haste.Skinning: Master of Anatomy gives 480 crit rating.

Pre-pot and during-fight potion usage is pretty much covered by Potion of the Jade Serpent for a DPS boost, preferably during Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp.

12.0 Eclipse Phases and Rotation (#ECL)

Basics:

Since the Eclipse mechanic has relatively stayed the same between Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, I will not cover the basics of how to move the Eclipse bar. I'll assume at this point you understand which spells move the bar and which direction they move it.

Cataclysm Changes

A few slight modifications have occurred since Cataclysm:

Euphoria -- Now always doubles energy gains when outside of an Eclipse.Energy gains -- Wrath now consumes 15 energy. There is no longer an oddity in energy gains every four casts.Energy gains -- Wrath now consumes/accrues energy at the end of spell cast, vice spell land, like in Cataclysm. This means there is no delay for energy accrual (a problem in fights like Ragnaros).Eclipse buff -- The eclipse buff immediately fires and expires, which means you can now immediately queue up empowered spells once an Eclipse lands, and no reason to cast an extra spell post-proc. This also means that you can't sneak in an extra Shooting Stars-Starsurge once leaving an Eclipse.DoTs and Lunar Shower -- Insect Swarm was removed, but now both Sunfire and Moonfire can be cast at any time. Lunar Showers no longer consumes energy. You'll always want to cast the non-empowered DoT first so the empowered DoT receives one stack of Lunar Shower.Astral Storm -- A lunar version of Hurricane now exists, called Astral Storm. This ability now morphs much like Sunfire and Moonfire did in Cataclysm. Astral Storm's damage is still much weaker than Hurricane.Eclipse states -- Lunar Eclipse is now heavily weighted towards single target DPS, whereas Solar is now heavily weighted towards AoE. (Wrath damage is much lower than Starfire, and Hurricane is much higher than Astral Storm)Starfall -- Starfall cooldown now resets every Lunar Eclipse.Celestial Aignment -- 3 minute cooldown, resets energy to 0, gives benefits of both Eclipses simultaneously. Applying either Moonfire or Sunfire will also apply the other. Energy is not gained during the 15 seconds.Astral Communion -- 4 second channel, gains 25 energy every second which ever way benefits you the most. (If starting at a reset Eclipsed state (such as instance change or death), will move towards Solar first). No cooldown.

Single target DPS

Single target DPS is now heavily weighted towards Lunar Eclipse, between both Starfall and the damage disparity between Starfire and Wrath.

A note regarding Starsurge: You will always want to cast Starsurge on cooldown and whenever it procs, exceptin Solar Eclipse, where you'll only want to cast one Starsurge until 5 Solar energy, where you may cast a second Starsurge. Casting a second one during the solar phase (pre 5-energy) will cause you to pre-maturely reach 0 energy. The below rotation does not list Starsurge, use the above strategy to know when to fill it in.

The optimum single target DPS rotation is as follows,

Start fight one cast pre-Lunar.

Starfall

Wrath once

Incarnation

Nature's Vigil (if you have it)

Sunfire, Moonfire

Starfall (when first Starfall duration ends)

Starfire until 0 energy

Celestial Alignment

Starfall (when second Starfall duration ends)

Moonfire (Sunfire will automatically be applied)

Starfire (utilize shooting stars procs)

Refresh Moonfire immediately before Celestial Alignment expires

Starfire to Solar Eclipse

Moonfire, Sunfire

Wrath until Lunar Eclipse.

Rinse and repeat (from the 'Starfall' below Celestial Alignment)

Please note there is also a "Solar opener" -- this opener is only for players with the Legendary meta gem and/or two RPPM trinkets. The details of this opener can be found here:

A final nuance occurs when you use the Dream of Cenarius talent -- you will want to cast a Healing Touch before each eclipse happens, and this can occur anywhere on the bar, even during an eclipse in preparation for the next one. The opener looks a little different, and we'll assume you're using the Solar opener (since most people should have the meta gem and/or RPPM trinkets):

There are plenty of addons to choose from, and most are merely a question of preference. You don’t need all of these, but here is a list of common addons you could and should consider using:

Proc tracking:

Balance Power Tracker: A highly configurable mod designed to track Lunar and Solar energy for Balance Druids in 4.0.

Weak Auras: WeakAuras is basically PowerAuras on crack. It allows you to do icon notifications similar to PowerAuras, but also has many more powerful features such as Grouping, Dynamic Grouping, Progress Bars, etc. If you're comfortable with PowerAuras and would like to move onto something more powerful, I suggest you check out WeakAuras.

AffDots - Balance Druid: A useful addon for tracking the strength of your DoTs and for estimating when it's a good time to overwrite weaker DoTs with temporary stronger ones.

WeakAuras in action:

14.0 Other moonkin guides (#OGR)

Think you have the basics down and would like some more advanced reading? Check out the following Balance Guides:

The original guide poster is no longer active. If you are willing to keep it up and make sure it's fully accurate/in depth/blah blah like the rest of them I'll remove that one and sticky this one so you can update it when 4.3 hits. Just make sure you give him credit in the beginning for the work he did.

Nice guide, all in all. Few things, though, that after my quick scan, you might want to add.

Movement
If you want to be the all inclusive guide, You might want to include a section on DPS while moving. I'd think that it's important for new Moonkin to get to know the basics of movement, which on many fights, can have a significant effect on our DPS. You know,

Spell Queueing at the end of an Eclipse
I didn't see any mention of queueing instants right as an Eclipse is ending, so that they can still benefit from the eclipse. That may be a more advanced topic, but the ability to (for example, and with a lucky proc) get off 5 Starfires and 2 Starsuges in an eclipse over the normal 5 & 1 is a decent DPS increase.

Set Bonuses
Didn't notice a section on this. Even if it's just a few sentence blurb, new Moonkin may not know the importance of set bonuses.

In advanced topics, you may also want to add a note that casting Starsurge on CD can be detrimental in some situations when you have 4p t12. Something along the lines of lappé's rules of thumb he posted in this thread:http://themoonkinrepository.com/view...398621&start=0

I'm not sure if that has been updated recently, but looking it over, it mostly seems accurate except that there's no mention of Spell Queuing for an extra eclipsed Starsurge in some situations.

Demonic Intent & Haste Breakpoints
It's important to note the changes to haste breakpoints if you're lucky enough to get DI. It can be found elsewhere, but it would be good to at least make a note that the breakpoints can change.

Just my personal thoughts, which you can listen to or ignore as you see fit. Nonetheless, a great guide for beginner/intermediate and basic advanced Moonkin-ing. Keep up the good work!

The original guide poster is no longer active. If you are willing to keep it up and make sure it's fully accurate/in depth/blah blah like the rest of them I'll remove that one and sticky this one so you can update it when 4.3 hits. Just make sure you give him credit in the beginning for the work he did.

In the introduction I mention that the core of the guide was written by Qieth and then maintained by Calculated.

---------- Post added 2011-09-28 at 08:14 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Narwhal6

Few thoughts:

It's a little hard to understand the guide being labeled 4.3 when we have received 0 patch notes about the upcoming changes (if there are any).

I also feel as if this is more of a 4.1 guide because there's limited discussion about the 4.2 changes.

Since the current content is Firelands, maybe you should make a few specs and talk about the ways Moonkin provide very strong utility in the current tier of fights.

You need to update your rotation based on the Tier 12 4p as well. I don't see any moonkins casting Starsurge on CD anymore since it will delay pushing your next eclipse if you're currently not in one.

As I said, this is my first pass at removing blatantly old information. The only major 4.2 changes were the changes to lunar showers as well as devaluing Starsurge (basically making it a Starfire with a Wrath cast time). I'll get more into 4.2 mechanics when I'm not having to pretend to be working while I work on it.

As for 4.3, the PTR currently shows no changes to balance druids -- the patch notes HAVE been released, so, as of now, this should be current going into 4.3 as well. Once we get more finalized tier 13 bonuses (which I hope to god change), I'll evaluate and post information regarding those and how they may possibly affect your rotation as well.

I see that you removed the Starsurge glyph after someone pointed out Wrath. Am I being a total nub in still using this glyph through FL? Isn't this still best on multi target fights? Because between my t12 4set and haste I seem to be able to get enough Starfalls in luner to make it still out dps glyph of Wrath , even on single target =|.

Thank you for updating the guide, I've been sad to see so little love for the newer Moonkins lately.

Nice guide, all in all. Few things, though, that after my quick scan, you might want to add.

Movement
If you want to be the all inclusive guide, You might want to include a section on DPS while moving. I'd think that it's important for new Moonkin to get to know the basics of movement, which on many fights, can have a significant effect on our DPS. You know,

Spell Queueing at the end of an Eclipse
I didn't see any mention of queueing instants right as an Eclipse is ending, so that they can still benefit from the eclipse. That may be a more advanced topic, but the ability to (for example, and with a lucky proc) get off 5 Starfires and 2 Starsuges in an eclipse over the normal 5 & 1 is a decent DPS increase.

Set Bonuses
Didn't notice a section on this. Even if it's just a few sentence blurb, new Moonkin may not know the importance of set bonuses.

In advanced topics, you may also want to add a note that casting Starsurge on CD can be detrimental in some situations when you have 4p t12. Something along the lines of lappé's rules of thumb he posted in this thread:http://themoonkinrepository.com/view...398621&start=0

I'm not sure if that has been updated recently, but looking it over, it mostly seems accurate except that there's no mention of Spell Queuing for an extra eclipsed Starsurge in some situations.

Demonic Intent & Haste Breakpoints
It's important to note the changes to haste breakpoints if you're lucky enough to get DI. It can be found elsewhere, but it would be good to at least make a note that the breakpoints can change.

Just my personal thoughts, which you can listen to or ignore as you see fit. Nonetheless, a great guide for beginner/intermediate and basic advanced Moonkin-ing. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for this -- I will definitely incorporate the details here. As for Breakpoints, I really wish I could do a table in the BBcode. I'm going to try to find a more graceful way to post it.

I see that you removed the Starsurge glyph after someone pointed out Wrath. Am I being a totaly nub in still using this glyph through FL? Isn't this still best on multi target fights? Because between my t12 4set and haste I seem to be able to get enough Starfalls in luner to make it still out dps glyph of Wrath , even on single target =|.

Thank you for updating the guide, I've been sad to see so little love for the newer Moonkins lately.

"Nub" is a harsh word, but you'll want to make the switch.

To my knowledge, for Starsurge to beat out Wrath, you pretty much would need to get literally every single Starfall to land in Lunar without waiting on the CD. Realistically, that doesn't happen often. Even then it might still fall short.

As for multi-target fights, the only real fights where multi-dotting is effective is Shannox (N) and ground DPS Alysrazor. All other fights are single target or Solar Cleave w/ a burn at the end. In both of the latter cases, Wrath is more effective.

To my knowledge, for Starsurge to beat out Wrath, you pretty much would need to get literally every single Starfall to land in Lunar without waiting on the CD. Realistically, that doesn't happen often. Even then it might still fall short.

As for multi-target fights, the only real fights where multi-dotting is effective is Shannox (N) and ground DPS Alysrazor. All other fights are single target or Solar Cleave w/ a burn at the end. In both of the latter cases, Wrath is more effective.

Thank you for clearing that up. I've been running off older, incomplete info around the glyph of starsurge now for some time then. I'll be swapping out for glyph of wrath.

Really appriciate you taking over the moonkin guide . Thanks for the effort.

But the haste break points have been bugging me a lot lately as I don't know if you should aim at a certain haste level? Or just go for max haste? I read the wing5wong's thread about the BiS lists and came up to a conclusion that with DI you shouldn't aim at more than ~2639 haste (i don't remember the right amount). Is this true? I haven't gotten nearly the BiS gear and could go well over that amount but should I?

Really appriciate you taking over the moonkin guide . Thanks for the effort.

But the haste break points have been bugging me a lot lately as I don't know if you should aim at a certain haste level? Or just go for max haste? I read the wing5wong's thread about the BiS lists and came up to a conclusion that with DI you shouldn't aim at more than ~2639 haste (i don't remember the right amount). Is this true? I haven't gotten nearly the BiS gear and could go well over that amount but should I?

Haste still has a higher weighting then the other stats until at least the breakpoints where you are under the GCD for cast time, which I don't think is going to happen any time soon. I think it's pretty safe to say haste will always be desirable.. at least for awhile yet.

That being said, sometimes there are better reforge combinations then haste. I've seen some combinations where I could gain 29 haste and 30 crit.. or say, 150 mastery. Obviously, the 150 mastery outweighs the additional haste, just do the sheer difference in numbers.